Document généré le 25 sept. 2021 05:39 Labour/Le Travailleur Considering the Third Revolution: Popular Movements in the Revolutionary Era J. Frank Harrison Volume 44, 1999 URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/llt44re05 Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) Canadian Committee on Labour History ISSN 0700-3862 (imprimé) 1911-4842 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer cet article Harrison, J. F. (1999). Considering the Third Revolution: Popular Movements in the Revolutionary Era. Labour/Le Travailleur, 44, 239–244. All rights reserved © Canadian Committee on Labour History, 1999 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ Considering the Third Revolution: Popular Movements in the Revolutionary Era J. Frank Harrison Murray Bookchin, Considering the Third Revolution: Popular Movements in the Revolutionary Era, 2 vols. (Cassell: London and New York, 1996 and 1998). MURRAY BOOKCHIN is perhaps the best known North American anarchist thinker and activist, a person whose name is linked with the movement and school of thought called "social ecology." International conferences have been organized to discuss and elaborate the concepts of social ecology — such as the one held in Portugal in August 1998. For more than four decades, his warnings even pre-dating Rachef Carson's Silent Spring, Bookchin has made us conscious of the crisis facing the planet. Without wishing to oversimplify, at the heart of the argument is the assertion that ecological problems have their root in class structure and socio-po­ litical organizations. Therefore, to save the earth and all the things upon it, we must transform the way in which human beings relate to each other. The direction in which we must move is that of anarchist communism. Anarchism, of course, encompasses a spectrum of arguments, the common theme of which is the rejection of hierarchy, the rejection of human domination in all of its forms (political, social, sexual, intellectual, economic). The social ecologist argues that these very hierarchies, in both capitalist and socialist states, establish the organizational and psychological conditions for the destruction of Nature and ourselves. Alternative organizations, especially alternative urban organizations, have become central to the discussion. The need for equality — impossible with private ownership of the means of production — and direct fact-to-face democracy is central to the social project. We are so familiar with the elitist and undemocratic character of our so-called representative democracies that we tend to take them for granted. Direct democracy J. Frank Harrison, "Considering the Third Revolution: Popular Movements in the Revolu­ tionary Era," Labour/Le Travail, 44 (Fall 1999), 239-44. 240 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL is regarded as Utopian, an impossible nowhere. This is a poor attitude, and a result of poor logic. As Utopian writers since Plato have argued, there are two good reasons for taking Utopias seriously, even if they are impossible. First, they are a measure against which we can judge the inadequacies of our own social condition. Second, the Utopia gives us a direction in which to move. Any small step, any increment, any improvement on the margin of the struggle is an improvement. Bookchin, on the other hand, is far more confident. He tries to show that the alternative is a practicality, not a Utopia. Now let us turn to the two volumes before us. Bookchin is not discussing social ecology in these books, although it must be understood as part of the discussion. He is discussing the possibility of revolutionary social change, the possibility of the alternate social organization, the direct democracy and common ownership required for a justice and morality in the past, to which must be added an ecologically sound environment in the present. He analyzes the history of revolu­ tion and rebellion in Europe and North America. He is determined to show that history does not have an inevitable process of development. Revolution does not inevitably have a Thermidor, a re-establishment of an authoritarian State after a period of disturbance (unlike Crane Brinton's Anatomy of Revolution, published in 1952). Similarly, Marxist determinism is rejected. Capitalism was not inevitable as a form of ownership and production. Nor was the modern State. They conquered, but there were other options that could have been established if the historical dice had fallen differently. This brings us to the title of the two volumes before us: The Third Revolution. Bookchin, whilst denying inevitability, is pointing to a recurring possibility, one that has happened periodically, and one that has been available during revolutionary periods of time. It is appropriate, or perhaps intellectually convenient, to think in terms of three revolutionary stages in the violent disturbances of the modem period that is, since the Reformation. The first revolution, with the people or masses uprising, rid society and the State of the old regime of inherited land and power, of aristocratic elitism. The second revolution is the centralist restructuring of the political and economic system. The third revolution has been the action of the populace to reclaim the power which it had, and lost, during the second revolution: ... the insurrectionary people, almost alone, were seeking to reclaim and expand highly democratic institutions that had been established during earlier phases of the revolutionary cycle and whose power had been subsequently reduced or usurped by the parties and factions that professed to speak in their name. (Vol. 1, 3) And The first revolution had overthrown the absolute monarchy in 1789, the second in 1830 had given rise to a royal constitutional system. In the third, the uprising of February 1848, the THIRD REVOLUTION 241 workers had to achieve their "democratic and social republic," a hope that had gone unfulfilled because of the usurpers at the Hotel de Ville. (Vol. il, 144) This search for democratic institutions, this third revolution, and its failure, is the theme of these two volumes. They take us from the peasant rebellions of the 14th century to the reformist and conformist activities of the Second International up to the beginning of World War I in 1914. A third volume is promised, giving us the details of the repression of the popular revolution in Russia by the Bolsheviks. In every case we see "statists" destroying real democratic possibilities; but the democratic possibilities were there, and in that Bookchin places his analysis and hope. We read the statement of Jacques-Pierre Brissot, the radical, but also the critic of "third revolution," writing on 24 March 1793: ... we have to put an end to the third revolution, the revolution of anarchy. We will only be able to finish it off by establishing a good constitution in the place of this system of disorganization and of despotism, which some people would like to perpetuate. (Vol. 1,332) Statists, though radicals, have ever worked against the democratic potential of revolutionary situations, pretending even that the potential was not there. Book- chin's purpose in these volumes is to explode the myth of leadership, of the necessity of a vanguard. Ordinary folk, regular people, both men and women, have actively struggled to control their own lives, in the face of persistent and brutal opposition of every kind. That is the optimistic message of Bookchin. In the first volume he gives us a summary analysis of peasant wars in the late medieval period,.the 17th century English Revolution, and the American and French Revolutions of the 18th century. In the second volume he looks to the various French revolutions of the 19th century (1830, 1848-50, 1871), and prole­ tarian socialism prior to World War I. He does not apologize for the "Euro-cen- trism" of his approach. In fact, he asserts that these revolutionary circumstances had a uni versa lism that was lacking in the nationalist struggles against imperialism that characterize "Third World" revolutions in the 20th century. Concerning the latter, he says "... these revolutions should not be mystified, nor should their justifiable claims to freedom be compared to the universal appeals to humanity that marked the great revolutions that occurred in Europe." (Vol. I, 18) I am not sure that this is entirely accurate, especially when we consider the writings of Mao Zedong in his pre-megalomaniac period, or the reflections of Frantz Fanon on the psychology of imperialist and revolutionary violence. Indeed, some Third World thinkers would argue that Western thought was part of the imperialist project. However, Bookchin's assertion that the intellectual core and model of modern revolution is found in "The West" is worth consideration — and he himself has the personal insight to acknowledge his attachment to the Enlightenment, to rational­ ism and the "revolutionary spirit." 242 LABOUR/LE TRAVAIL Bookchin's rationalism even leads him to the rejection and denial of the more radical elements of the English Civil War— the Diggers and the Ranters, who were actually communists who denied the legitimacy of property and the State. Their inspiration was, however, not the intellectual and structured argument of the Levellers — the democratic parliamentarians of die Putney debates, for whom Bookchin has far more admiration: ... if the Ranters were anarchists, they were mystical anarchists, and their mysticism tended to completely paralyze their capacity to change the real world.... The Levellers had tried to set things right by the sword, and the Diggers, more feebly, by the space..